Shock Value

The calibre of guests on his second solo album testifies to Timbaland's position at the top of the producers' tree.

“Shock Value” shows that Timbaland’s greatest value is playing the Blackground, letting other stars shine on his beats – and shine they do.

Shock Value has the loose, occasionally slack feeling of a mixtape — a clearinghouse for the spare beats Timbaland had lying around the studio, with lots of guest appearances by famous friends.

Timbaland may still end up claiming 2007 as his own, but Shock Value will only be backing evidence, rather than the landmark album that propelled his name to the top of the pop world.

It's nice that Timbaland is intent on challenging himself and his fans, but his daring misfire is the rare major-label hip-hop album that's arguably too adventurous for its own good.

Timbaland is not infallible – bits of the album stray into wank-off territory and could have done with some pruning – but when this album is good, it’s truly exceptional.

The guests’ main job is usually just to adorn whatever Tim has in mind, which makes sense - no one can say he doesn’t have lots of ideas floating around that big noggin. But for now, those ideas sound better on the radio, not on this album.

Despite his insistence—or is it the artists’ insistence?—that he rap, hype, and otherwise irk throughout every track he produces, Timbaland is an artist that should remain behind the soundboard, a point illustrated by lyrics like, “I’m number one, you ain’t number shit!” on the all-around odious “Kill Yourself.”

Shock Value turns out to be a decidedly un-shocking, but still above average pop album, which is fine, but certainly less than the masterpiece that Timothy Mosley is surely capable of.

Shock Value isn't a perfect album, but it does possess various charms.

He has unconventional collaborations, shows loyalty to old friends and concocts a hodgepodge of stuff that he can proudly say that he’s accomplished. Unfortunately those accomplishments just look good on paper…not so hot on record.

Timbaland has masterminded most of the amazing futurist hip-pop of the last decade. He’s also ballsed a good deal of it up by insisting on rapping himself: something he really isn’t very good at, and he knows it. It’s a problem that no amount of A-list guest contributors can gloss over.

Regardless of Shock Value's missteps, Tim's track record says all that is necessary.

It's disconcerting sometimes to be confronted with an entire album's worth of evidence that geniuses can fuck up, just like everyone else.